‘I think your niece and her family need to seriously examine whether there are more affordable schools as alternatives. Taking on more debt than the federal limits is dubious …’ – there are two loans being talked about here: student and parents. the former has limits ; the latter does not (limit= COA).
If they stick with the limit of the student loans they would have to pick a college that cost 27k over 4 yrs. yes, that would yield a CC. I cked the local community college and a 2 yr AA degree = $18k. PLus it does not have her desired area of study.
Her desired line of study is game design and development and interactive media soemthing that is not availabel at the local CCs
One option is do the gen eds with the cheaper CC and then do the game development later. It is a lot more complex , tho, as one has to do a mapping of the req’d gen ed classes of the CC w/ the game college and make sure they transfer. It is hard enough to find the right courses to stay on track for graduation for the single college approach.
here is her universe…the only ‘100 pct meet need’ is USC and this is not an option due to geographical proximity and less than standardized score to get in
http://www.princetonreview.com/press/game-design-press-release
OTOH - as you can see, this is more of a pre - professional line of study and so it might be a good investment.